


Wake Up

by orphan_account



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-04
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 16:11:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/869447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The quarian is the first to find him in the wreckage. She watches him for what seems like a long while before she goes to his side and helps.  “She wouldn't want this.” Her voice is quiet, weak from disuse and the strain of tears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake Up

It is a futile task.

Javik knows it the first moment he touches a broken shard of metal its edge jagged and coated in dried blood—he can hear sobs, terrified screeches as flames erupted and melted glass and splintered metal—he sees turians, quarians, salarians, asari. Names that will never be known to this cycle's history books; sacrifices for the greater good. No one dies well is what she told him once in the quiet din of the Normandy's shuttle as the synthetic watched them with unblinking eyes. Shepard had held her head high even as her voice shook—anger, grief, guilt—and her eyes had seemed to glow as she denied the glory of death and that redemption could only end in a wash of blood. She was a naïve fool; but, in that short span of seconds, in the privacy of the quiet shuttle, she had burned with such ferocity that even he had felt the sway of her gaze.

And, this—the martyrdom that her crew seems so eager to give to her—he does not understand how none of her crew can see it. The wrongness. She had not wanted to be snuffed out in a blaze of glory; and how, he wonders, can they all move on, pick up their lives, and leave without even a thought to pay respects to the woman they owe so much.

So he starts alone. He presses his palms to rubble and shatter glass. He says brief apologies to the bodies he finds, to the bodies he arranges. He mirrors the way the Commander and the quarian had laid their synthetic ally to rest—hands pressed over chest, head lowered. Sleeping. This is one custom he can understand. One he wishes he did not understand. He touches two fingers to each body's foreheads, wishes them luck in whatever afterlife they believe they are going to, he hopes for them to find some semblance of peace, and he continues on.

The quarian is the first to find him in the wreckage. She watches him for what seems like a long while before she goes to his side and helps. She moves slowly as they work in silence. It is comfortable, for a time, for he has trusted this woman with his life and he finds the company is almost welcome as the day drags on. Tali'Zorah does not speak to him for the first hour they are there. The sun is arcing close to the west when she finally stands still. Her spine is curved in quiet defeat and her shoulders are shaking. “She wouldn't want this,” the quarian finally says. Her voice is quiet, weak from disuse and the strain of tears. She moves closer, extends a shaking hand, and Javik pauses in his work to watch her from the corner of his eyes. She hesitates and pulls her hand back before continuing, words stronger and thick with conviction and grief, “She wouldn't want you to do this.”

For now, Tali'Zorah's false image of the Commander can be excused; she has a planet to attend to. A planet the Commander would want her to go to. No matter what.

“You may stop if you need.”

She sighs, “Good luck, Javik,” and leaves as quietly as she came.

 

*

 

The sun has began to set when the shuttle pilot the Commander used to get drunk with after missions comes to offer food and drink and dig beside him. The lieutenant says nothing to Javik as they work; and, if Javik were another, he might have felt grateful for the human's apparent understanding. But, it is hard to feel anything but anger when the whispers of the dead are pushing insistently at Javik's skin and when he can taste his own anger along the backs of his teeth. Time passes slowly. Javik pauses only to take sips from the bottles of water the human had brought with him.

Lights are beginning to flicker on around the rubble when James finds them. He goes to Cortez first and speaks to him quietly before offering a hand to help the pilot up. Their combined grief is raw and tangible amidst the disquieted echoes of the dead and murmurs of doubt.

“You need to rest,” Vega finally says. There is still dim, dusky light from the set sun. Javik doesn't move. “Buddy, c'mon, you've been going all day, you're _insane_ —”

“I am well enough.”

“You got really banged up in that last run and I know the doc didn't approve you. Javik. C'mon—Sparks told me. She's. Lola will still be here.”

Her corpse he means. “I will rest when I am ready.” There is still time. The Commander has bested death, torn down Reapers, united a galaxy. She will not be the corpse her crew believes her to be.

Vega sighs. “Fine. Whatever.”

 

*

 

When Javik rests, with bloody fingers and his knuckles bruised, he stays amoung the ruin. He waits. He might even sleep, briefly, but he is up with the dawn. He is only briefly aware of the pale arcs of color in the sky and of the sun's tentative rays shining down among the rubble. He listens to the voices of others digging for friends and family, to the delicate warble of the dead's memories, and to the crunch of boots coming closer. Cortez and Vega are there talking in hushed voices and trying to hide their grief from each other and the krogan they have brought with them. Javik finds more dead as he continues digging. He folds their hands over their chests and bows his head in respect. He can feel others watching him. He moves on, ignores their whsipers, and continues digging despite the fact that he can feel his wounds itching beneath his armor. His muscles ache but he only pauses to drink and, again, take the offered food that Cortez and Vega have brought with them. He declines their offer of sitting for lunch with the krogan and goes back to following his hands along trails others cannot sense.

After high noon passes, Vega tries to grab him once, twice—Javik shakes him off each time.

“It's his second day. I don't think he's stopped for more than a few hours,” Vega tells the krogan. Cortez stays quiet and the krogan grunts out a curse. “I mean—she can't be. Lola's good but—come on. It's _crazy_.”

“My battlemaster is strong,” the krogan rumbles calmly. There is anger that wavers between the words and a child's innocence hidden in the depths of his deep voice. Javik remembers Shepard speaking of this krogan. Grunt. She had never spoken of this one with the usual fondness of a Commander for a competent soldier. There had always been a motherly sort of pride to her voice. It's fitting that only the child among her crew would keep faith. “Shepard would not succumb to this.”

The three resume their digging away from Javik, talking amongst themselves and sharing breaks and water. They leave together at sundown. Javik is only thankful that they do not attempt to take him with them.

It is long past sunset when Javik, again, rests among the rubble.

He dreams in fragments. He sees flashes of the Commander's grin, the determined set of her jaw as she cut down a friend in the name of the greater good, of the tears in her eyes when her synthetic ally grabbed her around her throat, and the way she had narrowed her eyes and hissed at him _no one dies well_ in the quiet of the shuttle. But, most of all, he remembers her hands; the way she had held her shotgun as if she had been born holding it. He thinks of the loose curl of her fingers around a glass of whiskey and the way she had stopped smiling when other sat with her in the mess hall the longer the war went on. He remembers how her palm had felt pressed against his when they had said their goodbyes and then his mind goes, unbidden, to the way she had almost reached for him before she turned from him—from his outstretched hand and his pleas to take him with her—and charged blindly towards her cycle's last hope with nothing more than a good luck to serve as a final farewell.

He feels the loss of her so acutely in that moment that it steals his breath.

 

*

 

He hears her when he wakes on the fourth day.

Hope is not a luxury that Javik allows himself but as he digs through the sharp-edged rubble, his movements jerky and sharp against the pale water sunrise, he _knows_. Javik can feel her lingering in the blood-caked ruin and the jagged planes of glass that cut into his already bruised and bloodied hands. He hears Vega and Cortez coming towards him and the krogan shatters the silence with a bellow that Javik cannot—will not attempt to—understand. Javik shifts and watches as a wall crumbles in. The scent of blood and scorched flesh hits the roof of his mouth. 

He blinks dust from his eyes and listens.

Javik almost allows himself to hope for heartbeat; but, instead, he reaches forward. His fingertips brush against dogtags and a small, gemmed ring that hands beside them. Others are at his sie now as he reaches for her again—Breathe, he commands her. There's shouting—frantic, delirious, Javik can taste their exuberance and hope and he feels sick with it. And, he doesn't need their hope or their joy or their comfort or their sudden and bright reassurances. (So confident now that they can see her burned body with their own traitorous eyes.)

“ _Commander_.”

He needs nothing these other humans offer; he just needs... _her_... _to_ _breathe_.

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: "[Javik trying to dig Shepard out of the Citadel rubble](http://lilhys.tumblr.com/post/50484719025)"


End file.
